Nations Trust Bank CEO, Discusses Next Gen Banking

Nations Trust Bank PLC strongly believes that change is needed within the organisation and the financial services sector as a whole for it to survive and thrive in the future.

Renuka Fernando, CEO of Nations Trust Bank, said, “Globally there is significant disruption happening in the financial services industry especially in the commercial banking sector because of innovative technology. Products and services which are not compliant to operate within the financial services regulatory framework such as payment wallets and mobile payment platforms are now competing directly in the same space. As such, banks are now beginning to realise that they will need to disrupt their own business models and think different if they are to keep pace with these trends.”

Technology is reshaping the way we interact and engage with our customers, and some industries have managed to embrace these changes far more effectively than others. Although banks have been slow to adapt to the digital environment, perhaps due to legacy systems and the regulatory framework in which they operate, you are now seeing that a lot of transactions that happened through manual processes being rapidly automated.  Technologies in financial transactions have brought enormous customer convenience and ease, through mobile and online channels as well as speed and accuracy which we could not have achieved manually, she explained.

“In Sri Lanka I'm really proud to say that Nations Trust Bank has introduced the first fully digital banking proposition through our recently launched “FriMi” which is a fully-fledged bank account which is also a direct mobile payment and money transfer platform available for day-to-day transactions and purchases. We will continue to enhance this digital offer with other banking products being added in the future.” Renuka further explained.

“Nations Trust Bank has always considered customer service as the key to success and have woven its entire proposition based on bringing convenience to customers and understanding them better.But now we are determined to take this to a whole new level, using data analytics and technology to help understand customers intimately and design their experience with the bank based on their personal preferences and requirements. We are converting our bank to change the way we understand and service our customers from a product and channel based experience to a holistic seamless experience across our entire bank.” said Renuka.

Today we can give a lot of choice to the customers in how they interact with us, from traditional channels, call centre, electronic channels and digital channels like mobile, online and social media. Customers should be able to choose a mix of channels they are comfortable with and be able to have an omni channel experience which will enable them to start the interaction with one channel and end it with another, absolutely seamlessly, described Renuka.

She concluded, “This can’t be done in isolation without transforming the way we work internally. So we have already started re-engineering our processes which include bringing robotics into some of our processes and bringing innovative, collaborative technology which will help us to integrate the way we service and manage our customers. It also means that we will need to re-skill our staff to think and work differently and more proactively, using these technology tools. Technology brought to your customer in a simple, intuitive and easy to use manner and the way we personalise our customer experience will be the keys to succeeding in the future.”